Twin Cities

What To Do With Como’s Pedestrian Bridge?

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Pedestrian BridgeThe St. Paul Real Estate Blog recently covered the abandoned pedestrian bridge in Como Park. If you’re not familiar with the bridge, it’s near the intersection of Lexington and Horton by the old Streetcar Station building. Built in 1904, this was the grand entrance to Como Park, where guests would arrive via streetcar and then take this pedestrian bridge over the tracks and into the park. But when the streetcars disappeared the bridge became useless. With the tracks gone it seems to be a bridge over nothing (there’s even a sidewalk that runs parallel to the bridge, making it seem even more useless) and has fallen into disrepair. Now it’s fenced off to keep people from being injured by falling concrete.

Weekly guest blogger Erik Hare asked how the crumbling bridge might be saved. The problem, as I pointed out in the comments, is that the bridge has no purpose. If it were to be saved, it would need a purpose.

So what can we do with an old bridge to nowhere?
Continue reading What To Do With Como’s Pedestrian Bridge? →

Just for Fun, Politics

Vice Presidential Frenzy

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I’ve been getting kind of weary of the vice presidential speculation and frenzy. How many times can we talk about how Barack Obama is going to text message his choice and you can be the first to know? I heard three of four times that Obama could make his announcement as early as Wednesday morning. Everyone’s a buzz. It’s as if the political junkies have nothing else to talk about and refuse to move on until both candidates name a VP.

So yesterday I had enough and decided I’d pretend to be the first to know and start spreading fake vice president announcements on Twitter. I did Obama VP picks yesterday and McCain picks today. And let me tell you, I had way too much fun.

Fake Barack Obama VP Picks:

I know people say Obama needs to beef up his foreign experience & military credentials, but picking Cobra Commander as a VP?!

I can’t believe Obama picked Clinton—Bill Clinton—as VP! First black presidential candidate picks first black president as VP.

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Adoption

What Happens When We Get a Referral?

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I haven’t talked about our adoption in a while, mainly because things haven’t changed. We’re still waiting for a referral. Though it occurs to me that a lot of people don’t know what that means. A referral is basically when our agency matches us with a child to adopt from Ethiopia. The entire rest of our adoption process is waiting for that referral. Here’s what the referral process looks like:

  • Our agency receives a profile of a child by e-mail.
  • They review the information and look to the next family on the waiting list open to that child’s age, gender, background and medical condition (we’re open to a child or siblings under 12 months old of either gender).
  • Our social worker will contact us by phone with the referral information (which is why we’re a little jumpy when the phone rings).
  • Referral information is forwarded by e-mail (this includes the name, photo, age, gender, background and medical history).
  • Families are strongly encouraged to have the referral information reviewed by an international adoption clinic or pediatrician with experience reviewing child referrals from Ethiopia. A review by at least a pediatrician is actually required before we can accept the referral.
  • We need to report back to our agency regarding acceptance within one week of receiving the referral; this timeframe is flexible if there are pending medical questions.
  • Family notifies their specialist of acceptance and completes acceptance paperwork.
  • Specialist notifies Ethiopia of acceptance.
  • Ethiopia pairs the family’s translated dossier with the child’s referral information and submits to court.

Continue reading What Happens When We Get a Referral? →

Business & Marketing, Transportation

How Not to Market the Ford Flex

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Business Week has an interesting article about Ford’s new marketing czar, Jim Farley. Ford has effectively been having an identity crisis the past few years, struggling to sell cars while it has a reputation for selling trucks and SUVs. The solution so far doesn’t seem especially brilliant, but it’s certainly not bad. Initial ideas include getting dealer input and feedback on marketing campaigns and having strict control over the branding of each model.

Who knows if this will help Ford after their recent $8.7 billion (with a b) loss, though I’m pretty sure marketing alone isn’t going to cut it. Especially if this is what they come up with for their new seven-passenger crossover/SUV, the Flex:

The Flex is supposed to be a hip urban vehicle that Ford hopes will attract people for its design aesthetic rather than utility. At Farley’s urging, the team honed the Flex brand mission from a page, to a paragraph, and then to one sentence: “For people in search of stimulation.”

[Flex product manager Usha] Raghavachari’s brand book instructs dealers and ad makers that the Flex will never be shown with picnicking families, beach volleyball games, or dogs. No mentions of cup holders. “We can’t have this turn into a dog-drool minivan, but it might if we don’t exercise discipline,” says [CEO of Team Detroit, Ford’s ad agency, George] Rogers. All photography of the Flex was shot at night to drive home the nocturnally hip, ready-to-go-clubbing image Ford is aiming for.

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Art

Why Public Art is Cool

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Me and Alexander Calder's FlamingoThe night before my trip to Chicago I started looking up public art. I found a handy guide to public art in Chicago (all it’s missing is a map) and during a few free hours I wandered around downtown, specifically looking for a few works of art (Picasso, Calder, Gehry, Kapoor) and stumbling across a dozen more (Hunt, Miro, Dubuffet, You Are Beautiful, Chagall, more Calder, Moore, Smith, Piensa, Di Suvero, Kearney and Johnson, among the ones I could identify).

I’ve never done that before–seeking out public art during a vacation. Aside from the fact that I run my own public art site, that seems kind of weird. I like art. Heck, I even minored in it. But I usually don’t go that far out of my way to seek it out. So since I spent part of my vacation checking out art and for the last nine months or so I’ve spent loads of free time checking out public art, I thought it might be time to explore what’s so captivating about public art.
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Introspection

My Pilgrimage to Chicago

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Driving KevinEarlier this week I had a CFCC meeting in Chicago, so I left the wife and child carless and drove 400 miles to Chicago (gas may be expensive, but it was still cheaper than planes or trains). I used to drive that stretch of Interstate between St. Paul and Detroit all the time in college (at least six times per year?), so it was just like old times. I also realized that I haven’t taken a long road trip by myself in a long time. I think 2005 was the most recent, and before that it was probably 2001. I guess marriage does that to you.

I also realized the last time I spent any considerable amount of time in Chicago was 1999 when I lived there for a summer. Welcome to nostalgia land.

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Art, Twin Cities

Start Seeing Art Passes 300 Works

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International Academy LEAP student self portraitThis week my little side project/hobby, Start Seeing Art, posted its 300th work of public art. No wonder I can’t write a book, I’m too busy with art.

The project’s been a lot of fun. I get to check out cool artwork in the city and I usually bring my daughter along to climb on the sculptures (her most recent favorite is the one she called a “sculpture boat” even though it looked nothing like a boat).

While I do have Google ads on the site, it hasn’t been much of a money maker (maybe $10?). And I don’t expect it to be, at least not yet. It’s really too niche of a site for Google to work well and I need more traffic to attract my own ads. So in the mean time I’m just doing it as cheaply as possible. That means using WordPress and a couple plugins to make it work, though it doesn’t function as cleanly as I’d like. I also haven’t bothered with a real logo or a slick design. I’d love to make a lot of changes, but I can’t justify the time or the money. It’s a real bootstrap project, and for now I’m just putting the time into content. I think the content makes all the difference. When you have 300 works of art it suddenly becomes a lot more useful.

So we’ll see where it goes. Though currently I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the photos I’ve taken. I guess it’s better to load up on photos in the summer when it’s nice, and then when it’s not photo weather I can post them all to the site.

Domicile

We Installed a Picket Fence

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The New Picket FenceLast weekend my father-in-law and I installed a picket fence. Well, maybe I should say he installed it and I helped. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing with projects like that, and he definitely does. But I do have the blister to prove I did my share.

The fence looks pretty amazing. Sure beats chicken wire.

It’s really small, basically one 26-foot section and two short sections (5 and 7 feet). Not a lot of fence, but just enough to close in the yard and be a lot of work. What’s a lot of work? Well, there was a lot of concrete buried in the back yard. Then we hit what I can only assume was the foundation to an old garage.

And let’s just say that me and manual labor don’t go well together. I work with my mind, not my hands, and it shows. Working with my hands more might be good for me, but I’m definitely not good at it.

Business & Marketing, Twin Cities

Director of Marketing Insults Journalists

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Heard a story on NPR today about St. Paul being in the spotlight for the Republican National Convention. The part of the story that stuck out to me was when Erin Dady, director of marketing for the City of St. Paul, made this assumption about the national media:

“I would guess a significant percentage of the 15,000 members of the media who are coming to town couldn’t even locate St. Paul on a map,” she says. “So, what better way to tell our story to the world than to have 15,000 members of the media here in town? It’s really priceless media attention.”

Maybe Dady has some research to back up that assumption (in which case, why not use the research instead of speculating?) or maybe she’s referring to the fact that national reporters seem unable to distinguish St. Paul and Minneapolis (though that has little to do with locating St. Paul on a map)—I don’t know. But however you spin it, it seems like a really dumb idea for the marketing director of St. Paul to insult the intelligence of 15,000 journalists who are about to descend on our city.

History, Science

11 Years to Walk on the Moon

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On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit Earth. Not content with second place, the United States quickly rallied to achieve their own interstellar milestones. On July 29, 1958—50 years ago today—President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law, creating NASA. On July 20, 1969—almost exactly 11 years later—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

It took a mere 11 years to go from first satellite to the first steps on the moon. That’s incredible progress in an incredibly short time. A little more than a decade and you can walk on the moon. (via kottke.org)

A work-at-home dad wrestles with faith, social justice & story.